School Notes: School of Medicine
November/December 2011

Professor wins major science award

Arthur L. Horwich, Sterling Professor of Genetics and professor of pediatrics, has been named a winner of the 2011 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award for his discoveries of how proteins form their complex shapes. Horwich joins Franz-Ulrich Hartl of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Germany as cowinner of this year’s research award. Scientists used to think that proteins folded into shape by themselves, without any cellular energy input. Over more than two decades of work, Horwich and Hartl showed that proteins fold in the cell with the assistance of specialized proteins called chaperonins, which form a sort of a dressing room in which nascent proteins are assisted into their functional shapes. (For aYale Alumni Magazine report, see page 22.)

Enzyme breakthrough may boost Alzheimer’s research

A team led by Ya Ha, associate professor of pharmacology, has made a significant breakthrough in determining the atomic structure of the enzyme FlaK. The research, published in Nature on July 28, marks the first time that anyone has solved the structure of an aspartyl membrane protease, a family of enzymes of which FlaK is a member. Moreover, FlaK has an infamous cousin—presenilin, an enzyme that plays a major role in the development of hereditary, early-onset forms of Alzheimer’s disease. The scientists hope that knowledge of FlaK’s structure will help shed light on presenilin’s form and function, which in turn could reveal new opportunities to treat or prevent Alzheimer’s in its more common forms.

Researcher takes international prize

Ruslan M. Medzhitov, the David W. Wallace Professor of Immunobiology, is one of three scientists awarded the 2011 Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine. A member of Yale Cancer Center and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, Medzhitov has made groundbreaking contributions to the understanding of Toll-like receptors (TLRs), an evolutionarily ancient component of the innate immune system that provides rapid, first-line defense against infections. Medzhitov’s work has elucidated how TLRs sense microbial infections, TLR signaling, and TLR activation of inflammatory and adaptive immune responses. The Shaw Prizes, international honors that carry a monetary award of $1 million (US), are given by the Hong Kong–based Shaw Prize Foundation for achievement in the life sciences, astronomy, and mathematics.